When
Jesus
was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod,
behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where
is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have
come to do him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was greatly
troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief
priests and the scribes of the people, He inquired of them where
the Christ was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of
Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: And you,
Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of
Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people
Israel.” Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from
them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and
said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have
found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”
After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star
that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and
stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at
seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child
with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to
return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.
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I
love The Epiphany. Through much of
Christianity, today is the
day when presents are exchanged and understandably, today is the day
when we
remember the wise men, the kings, or the magi, bringing gifts to the
Christ
child. It’s a day of great
celebration. I also love the story of
the Three Kings. I think we all have
childhood memories and imaginations of the three great figures. I hope you noticed as you came in, if you
came in the front doors, that the Knights of Columbus put up the Three
Kings. You know that beautiful nativity
set is put up in pieces. It is put up
without the Christ child and then on Christmas Eve, the Christ Child is
placed
in the manger. Then a few days before
the Epiphany, they place the three Kings. How many of you noticed the
three
Kings? How many did not notice
them? Almost all men, a few women.
We had a meeting last
week. There was a beautiful centerpiece
on the table. Some lady had taken a
lot
of time making it, and I never noticed it. At
the
end of the meeting, someone said, “Oh Toni, what a beautiful
centerpiece.” Myself and Don looked over
at each other and
said, “Oh yeah. It’s very nice.” That’s the way we men are.
In my former parish, one woman went home to her
husband who was a bit lazy. He never went to church.
She said, “Honey, you’ve got to start going
to church. The priest is just like
you.”
The Three Wise Men or the
Three Kings are very interesting. It’s
part Scripture, and part tradition, part lore and perhaps legend. Even the fact that we say Three Kings is not
very sure at all. The Scriptures just say that magi came from the East. In some versions of Scriptures it says
astrologists. Magi means magician, but
not in a tricky sense of the term, in a different sense, as those who
could
work wonders. I assume we came up with
three Kings because there are three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
They were not kings, at
least not according to Scripture.
Perhaps, we think they were kings because of Psalm 72 that was
sung so beautifully
a moment ago. It talks about kings coming and presenting gifts to God. We do know they came from the East, and most
scholars think that that would be from Persia, which is today of
course, Iran. They
believe
that because many of the Persians followed the religion known as
Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrians believed in
the god of light, his name was Mazda.
They worshiped the god of light and the stars were very
important to
them. For them, astrology wasn’t a
science, it was their theology. It
makes sense because in their religion, when a great man is born, a
great king
is born, a new star is given. That all
happened in the Scripture account that we have.
We think we know their
names
now; there is no record of their names until the 6th Century. In the 8th Century, St. Bede the
Venerable tells us their names and a little something about them. One
of them
was named Melchior, and he was elderly, and he had this long blond hair
and a
long blond beard. He brought the gift of
gold, which was the symbol of royalty.
Another one of the kings, according to St. Bede was Balthazar. He was a black man from Arabia. Balthazar
means Prince of
Treasure. Melchior means Prince of
light. Balthazar brings the gift of Myrrh, which is used, in embalming,
so it’s
symbolic that this child will be mortal and would die.
The third king, according to St. Bede, was Casper
or Gaspar and that means “the white one”
in
Hebrew. He brought the gift of
frankincense, which is used to worship God, symbolizing that this child
is
divine. That’s according to St. Bede the
Venerable.
This is not sacred
tradition
of our church. We stand on three legs in
the Catholic Church: Sacred Scripture,
the Bible, Sacred Tradition, which includes things like much of our
Liturgies,
the Saints, etc. That’s part of our
Sacred Tradition. That’s part of our
belief and understanding of Christ has grown over 2000 years. Then we stand on the Magisterium, the
teaching authority of the Pope and Bishops that has been passed on from
Peter
and the Apostles. This is not Sacred
Tradition. You don’t have to believe
these stories. They are what I call
little traditions. They are interesting
and fascinating of how impoverished we’d be if we didn’t have some of
these
wonderful stories. Many others have
come to us as well from different cultures of man.
The bottom line of the
whole
story of the visits of the magi to the newborn King is quite simple:
this is
the day of the Epiphany, the manifestation of God to all the nations. The first to visit Christ were the shepherds,
and they were of course Jews. Christ
himself was a Jew. He was King of the
Jews. The Jews are the chosen people of
God. At the Epiphany, we see God shows
himself or manifests himself to all people, everywhere.
Thank goodness. We are now involved
in His work of salvation,
or His promise of salvation. You could
say based on that that this is the birthday of the Catholic Church. The word Catholic of course means
universal. We are everywhere.
Many of you travel a lot. No matter
where you go, you’ll find the
church. Like many of you, I’m sure I’ve attended mass in whatever
language. You know what the priest is
saying when he says, “The Lord be with you”, whether it’s Chinese,
Vietnamese,
or Spanish, or whatever language, and it’s wonderful that we are
universal.
If we are universal, it’s
also true that we are not fully universal.
There are about 1.7 billion Christians: 1.1 billion Roman
Catholics,
about 200 million Orthodox Christians, who we are in very close
relationship with. As a matter of fact,
there are important
meetings coming up within the next year, and 300-400 million
Protestants. It’s 1.7 billion out of 6
billion in the
world. So what about those other 4.3
billion people? Are they excluded from
God’s promise of salvation? Many
Christians think that they are. They use
the Bible as a proof test and they take the verse that says that unless
you
profess to Jesus is Lord, you cannot enter into heaven. But we
Catholics don’t
believe that. From the very beginning of
the church, the founders of the church, the great writers of the first
century
have addressed that question. In Vatican
II, in the 1960’s, the question again, was addressed and clarified for
all of us. In effect, the Vatican Council
said that all
men and women of goodwill, seeking God with a sincere heart, even
agnostics and
atheists, can be saved by God’s mercy and love.
Now, again, how do we reconcile or square that, with this one
verse from
Scripture. Well, we don’t read just one
verse from Scripture. We read the whole
Bible, particularly the Gospels. We know
a lot about Christ. We know that Christ
is fair; Christ is the God of mercy.
Christ’s love is universal.
That’s very clear from reading the Gospels, from knowing the
stories of
His death and resurrection. The
question is "Would Christ, would God, punish those who have never heard
of him
to hell forever?" Would you?
You are not more merciful than God. It’s
an important question. Oftentimes people
come to me whose relatives
are not Christians with great concern for their welfare.
There is a woman whose mother lives in
Beijing. She came to see me, and she
was a Catholic, Christian, and said, “I’m worried about my mother. She hasn’t accepted Christ.
She is going to go to hell?” I
said, “I don’t know. Is your mother a good
woman?” She was filled with tears, and she answered, “Oh, yes.”
I said, "Just leave the judgment to God and
trust in his love and trust in his mercy."
Every time my family gets together at Thanksgiving and
Christmas, one of
my nephew’s father-in-law is very worried about his brother. He says, “Just not confessing to Jesus. He’s dying.
He has Parkinson’s’ Disease and other complications. I’m worried about him.”
I say, “Is he a good man?” And he says,
“Far better than me.” And that happens to
be accurate. He’s a good fellow, he really
is. Leave the judgment to God.
I’m glad that the church
has
clarified this teaching. It helps us to
understand our brothers and sisters, and it helps us to understand
God’s love
even more.
Having said that though,
how
fortunate were the Magi. They found the
Christ child. Can you imagine kneeling
that far from the Christ child and adoring Him and bringing Him your
gifts? You wouldn’t miss that visit,
would you? Yet, we have something
much greater here today. We also come to
bring our gifts to God and instead of looking at Him from a distance,
albeit a
short distance, we receive His Body and Blood in Holy Communion. We become one with this Christ, in this Holy
Communion. How blessed we are to know
Jesus Christ. How blessed we are to
celebrate this Catholic faith of ours that is so old and so beautiful. How blessed we are.
Come let us adore him, Christ, the Lord.